Too many of us/. readers see only "government control" when issues of regulation and such arise. They fail to realize that some of these laws serve our interests better than not having them at all.
Now if the purpose of this bill was to eliminate all sexually explicit material, gore, and GTA like violence from gaming I would take issue. However to be able to create and market ANY game that a developer wanted to create, so long as it was properly rated, would be a great boon to the industry.
Just look at the porn industry. Without the X and XXX ratings, I would bet that you would need to look underground to find material that fits in either category. But because of a clear rating system for movies, the market allows these movies to be produced... and even broadcast.
GTA was released and it has come under significant legal assault due to it's content. Had a mandatory, legal, and accepted rating system been in place, and the game was properly labeled and had the proper sales restrictions in place, then there would be no grounds for a suit.
I am actually surprised that the game studios don't lobby for a similar bill (this one is a little unrealistic), it would allow them absolute freedom in their design and would result in the retailer and parents taking the blame when children were exposed to "unsavory" content. Not to mention, the more severe the rating, the more "desirable" the product is for kids... slap an XXX rating on a game, and kids will come out of the woodwork to get their sticky little hands on it.
Ratings work... they work for the studio, and for the consumer. This has been proven with TV, movies, and virtually any other media that is rated for proper consumption. Let us ensure that the government avoids dictating what content CAN NOT be put in a game, and instead let the consumer make an educated decision about what they buy, while letting studios continue to push the envelope with unsavory content.
On a side note... it would also be kinda nice to have a system where the OS or console was aware of the rating and parents would be able to restrict the system (or user account) to games under a certain rating. This would result in games with multiple levels of content... if the user were restricted to PG, then all of the sex and gore would be reduced to PG levels... while most of us would run the game unrestricted and see all of the pixelated nudity our nether regions desire. Concerned parents would be happy, and the rest of us would as well.
It's pretty safe to say that the majority of virtual machines in the world are run on windows boxes... so what they are saying is that "a windows user can't run a cheap version of windows in a virtual machine... oh yeah and the few Mac users gotta pony up too"
The part I don't get is why. Most of the windows virtual machines in use today are used for development purposes... as a developer, I need to be able to test that my software works on all versions of windows... why the hell can't I run them all in a virtual machine?
We care because instead of taking a once useful and arguably well made software product and tossing it in the trash... they are instead opening it up for those who are interested.
We care because they are helping to set a precedent, one that I hope becomes the norm for tech and software companies, at end of life... open source!
We care because one of the benefits of open source, is that a particularly well written piece of code can be adapted for a different function while retaining most of what makes it 'good'. So NAC's are worthless to you... but what about that one really powerful function Cisco wrote that finds it's way into 3 other open source products that are NOT worthless to you.
Finally, were NAC's so bad that you would rather they just tossed the code in their recycle bin?
Thank GOD openID is not really about identifying an individual! It's about creating a single identity... not necessarily my own.
When I go on the internet, I can be a different person. I may be a sad little 14 year old in real life, but on slashdot I'm a 35 year old IT professional. The last thing I want is to have my online ID tied to my real life identity.
If that were the case, then there is the potential that the signatures you had could be used to identify you outside of your cozy internet environment. Think ads that say... we can beat the rates your paying to SUCHANDSUCH mortgage company, or JIM BOBS hardware now open in YOUR HOME TOWN... a lot of information could be extracted based upon who you have had sign your identity.
I agree that a web of trust is a good thing... in fact it would make an excellent addition to the OpenID framework in the future. I could set up an OpenID server with multiple online ID's, I could tie my signed public key to some of those id's.
Even better would be the ability to have our openID server configured so that it would supply credentials only to sites that WE trust. For example, I supply a key for my bank to use for my account... then when I log in using my OpenID, they encrypt a random string using the key I supplied them. My openID server could be configured to A. check that the request is coming from a trusted domain, B. verify that the request was encryped with the correct key, and C. verify that I provided the correct passphrase to decrypt the string. Essentially it would prevent phishing (the false host doesn't have the key so they can't authenticate even if they spoofed the domain), and it would allow the bank to verify that my openID url wasn't hijacked by someone pretending to be me (unless they stole the private key off my server).
That would be secure... and if my bank required that I hand deliver the key on USB or CD media so they could verify that the key did indeed come from the account holder, it would be even more secure! They could even use such a system as an alternative to asking for personal information when calling them... I supply my OpenID name and a verification code, they encrypt the code with the trusted public key I provided and verify it with my OpenID server, which would decrypt it and reply back with the decrypted content.
"Hydraulic squeezers can't achieve 1/30 compression. Or, imagine if they could compact that 1/30th instead of 1/1?"
Try, hydraulic squeezers can't achieve 1/1 compression of volume.
They claim that the volume of the ash is 1/30 of the input trash. When you compact something, you do not decrease the volume of material, you just remove the air spaces between and within the material... unless you compress it so much that you change the composition of the material or at very least it's temperature. If I have 1 ton of trash and place it in a swimming pool and measure the water it displaces, assuming there are no air pockets that the water cannot reach, it will displace the same amount of water as that same trash tightly compressed... thus the volume of trash is the same.
A 1 cubic meter box has a certain volume of paper matter... sure compressed the box takes up far less than one cu meter of space, but the amount of paper matter has not been reduced at all. But if you burn that paper, a considerable amount of the paper will be released as one type of gas or another, greatly reducing the volume of the paper matter.
I am quite certain that the 1/30th volume figure is talking about 1/30 of the compressed volume of trash... otherwise I could achieve that figure by squashing a couple of boxes and cans. Or better yet, by starting with a pile of balloons as my input.
1. Place the CPU on the opposite side of the MOBO, with a little thermal paste and a couple of precision standoffs you could effectively couple it thermally with the MOBO backplane... which would of course be one big heatsink cooled by a blower forcing air behind the motherboard, between the backplane and the side of the case.
2. make most of the upgrades externally accessible. This is a bit more of a total redesign, but seriously, who really needs room for full length cards anymore... and can't we just do away with PCI altogether now. Lets replace it with an upgrade cartridge design thats about 4x4x1 and snaps into an external slot on the outside of the case, almost like a removable HDD caddy but smaller.
Used vegetable oil has to be the stupidest replacement fuel ever thought up. Sure it's cheap now, it's a waste product... but not for long the way these soon to be short lived startups are going.
The only ones who will profit from a Veg Oil economy will be McDonald's and the like... their oil will be just as valuable before and after use, thus they spend nothing on oil at all, instead of throwing it away at the end of the day they sell it for their cost.
Eventually demand will surpass capacity to produce... and this is probably 1% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil_used_a s_fuel#Waste_Vegetable_Oil) of the current petroleum demands... sure it's better than draining an non-renewable resource... but it's no replacement.
I surely wouldn't want to stake my future wealth on it by starting a business around it... the economics just don't work... if you are successful it won't take long to put yourself out of business. When the veggie oil starts matching unleaded, you will have capped.
Nothing to see here... just another story about the RIAA shooting itself in the foot. I just hope that someday the general public gives a shit about who they get their entertainment from, and gets something done about this BS that the RIAA keeps pulling without any oversight from the government or condemnation from the public (except for those of us who are in the 'know').
Seriously, it's amazing how many IT managers don't get this... sure I don't have 10 years experience with Peoplesoft... but I bet within a year I'll be ahead of 50% of of the current support staff just due to the diversity of my knowledge and my understanding of the way things work at a low level (thank you Linus!).
So it continues, they hire a guy who will keep doing things today the way they were done yesterday instead of hiring someone who can bring some perspective with them.
The old school adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is dead. To keep up in today's tech society, you need to plan to replace almost everything every 10 years or so... even your employees. This constant change brings new perspectives and new solutions, allowing you to keep up or ahead with the competition. Analog telephone technology ain't broken, but I think we can all agree that it needs fixing. The way people seem to be moving more and more to VOIP and wireless for voice and away from their telcos for data, I bet the most telcos out there wish they hadn't kept trying to leverage the old tech and started fixing what wasn't broken a long time ago.
The only reason that I can see to not put one on the core is that it would break x86 spec. Though it looks like AMD is considering doing this anyway with their new GPU/CPU combo mentioned today.
As far as FPGA (a type of PLD that is "field programmable" meaning it can be reprogrammed while installed rather than by using a separate programmer) technology being oldschool, I would say it is not.
I believe that they are primarily used in hardware design however, and very few have been used in consumer products as it is cheaper to mass produce a dedicated chip. That and I could argue that hardware manufacturers would rather sell you the next version of the hardware than let you simply download an update for your FPGA.
Considering that an FPGA can be programmed to do specialized tasks at speeds that can be as much as 100X faster than a general purpose CPU, I think it is inevitable that they will eventually become mainstream in some form or another... the HT bus is ideal for such an implementation.
I have made a similar argument, I want a FPGA on the HT bus. A Fully Programmable Gate Array would allow software developers to create hardware "programs" to accelerate their products. For example, Photoshop and Premiere could re-program the FPGA to accelerate processor intensive tasks. Codecs could be implemented on the chip for realtime encoding (for example http://www3.elphel.com/en/products is a camera that does OGG Theora in a FFPGA in realtime at 640x480x90fps). And game writers could optimize any part of their applications they wish. Sure FPGA's are not as fast as a non-programmable processor, but they are infinately more flexable, and if it's sitting on the HT bus with direct access to system RAM, you would see some amazing uses. Accelerated encryption/decryption, email filtering and virus detection, or any other process that is sequential in nature and done repeatedly.
I have come to the conclusion, that unless a tape backup solution is necessary it is often easier to backup to a remote machine. Sure, archive to tape once in a while, but for the primary requirement of a backup... rsync your data to a seperate machine with a large and cheap raid array.
I use a wonderful little tool/script called rsnapshot to backup our servers to a remote location. It's fast as it uses rsync and only transmits the portions of files that have changed. It's effortless to restore as the entire directory tree appears in each backup folder using symlinks, and it's rock solid.
Essentially the best part of this solution is it's low maintenance and the fact that restorations require absolutely no manual work. I even have an intermediate backup server that holds a snapshot of our users home directories... my users can connect to the server via a network share and restore any file that has existed in their home directory in the last week by simply copying and pasting it... changed files are backed up every hour.
Sure, the data is not as compressed as it could be in some backup solutions, and it's residing on a running server so it's subject to corruption or hack attempts. But my users absolutely love it. And it really doesn't waste much space unless a large percentage of your data changes frequently, which would consume a lot of tape space as well.
The advantage of RFID is that it could be read from a distance... so that you could walk out of a store with a cart full of items and not need to scan each one individually. This removes this ability.
The security concern with RFID is that it could be read from a distance... so a marketing company could scan a cart full of items and not need to scan each one individually. this removes this ability.
OK so now it doesn't benifit you or the store at all... but it protects your security better! But the way I see it is it's no better than the current, cheap alternative of barcodes.
I think where TFA is off is in it's comparing this technology and it's applications to RFID. These technologies are certainly not targetting the same markets or applications. I wouldn't mind the new chip in my credit card (unlike RFID), but don't raise the price of my canned fruit by embedding one in the label.
This new technology is best suited in situations where large volumes of data need to be attached to an object and securely (relative, physical only) read very quickly and with minimal effort. Medical applications come to mind as well as banking, credit card processing, and identification (DL, VISA, Passport).
I have what I believe to be an excellent open source opportunity that I would love to develop around an existing open source product. There are a number of potential concerns however, namely:
1. The parent software has some issues that may make my company a target for patient and other legal attacks. For example, it uses Mpeg4, and plays DVD's under Linux.
2. The product would be heavily dependant upon COTS (commercial off the shelf) hardware from a manufacturer that does not provide detailed specifications, and thus could easily force us into a licensing agreement by simply changing the hardware and making all current open source drivers obsolete.
3. The product would be competing in a several hundred million dollar industry where it is not likely to be well liked by it's powerful and wealthy competitors, and thus would be a target for any shenanigans they might dream up.
4. Finally, I have essentially no development experience, nor do I have any skilled developers at my disposal. Instead I would need to attempt to bribe (for lack of a better word) the parent software's developers to make changes to their software as well as recruit my own developers to handle the proprietary end of the product that will be used to make the OSS marketable for the application in mind.
I can imagine that issues such as these have great influence in your decisions. There could be nothing worse that funding the next best thing since sliced bread only to have the project destroyed by legal, political, or underhanded business practices. How big a part do these factors play in your decision making process?
Do you believe that open source startups should be headed by a business minded developer, or is it more important for that leader to have a clear vision and a larger view of the project? In other words, would I, with no way to demonstrate what I hope to accomplish, even be taken seriously with just an idea, a business plan, and a lot of motivation? Even if that idea had enormous potential to become a leader in a multi-hundred-million dollar industry?
I appreciate your willingness to participate in this Q&A, I am sure this discussion will be very popular as I know that most of/.'s audience is bright enough to have thought up an idea like mine.
By the way, I conceived an internet connected, MP3 downloading/playing Jukebox... called a lawyer who specialized in Jukebox copyright law, had a great discussion with him regarding how Jukebox law might apply to downloaded music, and I never heard back from him again. A year or so later they started hitting bars and pool halls in my area. A little research found that this lawyer had his name on a patent or two related to the product. I have since learned to be a cryptic as possible about my ideas, sorry about that!
... would be a FPGA that sits on a core. For those who are not familiar, a Field Programmable Gate Array is essentially a peice of hardware that can be "programmed" to perform specialized tasks, especially sequental ones, at faster speeds than software on a general purpose CPU. Imagine a fully programmable coprocessor with blazing access to RAM and a hypertransport to the general purpose cores for more complex functions that are hard to script in hardware.
I have seen comparatively weak, 1M gate FPGA's encode OGG Theora at 1280x1024 at almost 30fps (http://www3.elphel.com/en/products), imagine what a FPGA with a far greater number of gates, communicating at processor speeds could do.
Sure it would need to be reprogrammed for every task it needed to perform, however if I'm doing video encoding or decoding, I wouldn't mind reprogramming it. Game designers could even use the FPGA to accelerate tasks from AI to raytracing to whatever.
It may not be as fast as a coprocessor built for a single task, but it would be a heck of a lot more versitile. And it could be reprogrammed if any bugs are discovered.
As the GP said... he needs to brush up on his economics. The parent is exactly right, the only things that typical companies that show profits can do with their money are:
1. give dividends to investors (boosts stock appeal and encorages stable pricing which...) 2. improve the companies credit rating so that the company can... 3. borrow money at extremely low rates so that they can... 4. lend the money at higher rates and... 5. make more money so that they can... 6. GOTO 1
The benifit of this system is that it keeps the money circulating in the economy. If MS did not borrow and lend, their billions would be out of circulation and our economy would suffer far more than most people realize.
Essentially what huge companies with great credit ratings do is provide extremely low risk investments for lenders and thier customers. So if I buy a low risk (low yeild) CD or bond, the bank I bought it from would then lend that money to someone like MS for a slightly higher rate than they are paying me. Without large, stable, profitable companies like MS taking loans, the returns of my low risk investments must drop as the bank cannot afford lend my money out at those low rates due to increased risk in the loans they issue. Therefore I lose.
If I could stand being any nerdier than I already am, I think I would have gone into econ. Econ is like an infinately variable application... make one minor change then predict how the ripples will effect something completely unrelated.
For example, there are many economists that belive that outsourcing our jobs is actually going to improve our economy and employability once the system has run its course? Sure it's counter intuitive... but with a clear mind and some creative thinking you can see how this might occur.
I could be wrong, but I think they mean that make between 4% and 6% per stock. Therefore if they do this 100 times per year they make a pretty hefty chunk after compounding.
For example a $1000 start would pay out $131,501.26 like this over 100 iterations if they keep reinvesting the funds on their next spam crusade (using 5% return per iteration).
So this is not 4%-6% per year... it's 4%-6% per stock... considering they are only invested for a day or two it's entirely possible that they actually bring home closer to 10000% per year. Not bad for little to no work!
... but how about making all government funded research created technology free to the government. For example, if my tax dollars helped develop and market drug X, why the hell should my tax dollars have to pay market price when someone on medicaid is perscribed drug X.
I think that all government funded research should be internationally patented by the US Governement and all rights to manufacture based on these patents should be free to any US owned and based corporation. This would give the US an edge in the global technology sector.
Some would argue that this would hurt competition. I agree, but not entirely. Sure Company X who developed technology X on a governement grant would never be able to own the patent on the technology... however they still paid their workers and maintained another year of success in the market. Next year, they can pursue private investments with thier new reputation and create a for-profit product based upon patented improvements to their previously disclosed discoveries.
This system would help prevent government funds from going into wasteful duplication of efforts in areas such as cancer/AIDS research who's goals should be the improvement of society rather than massive profits anyways. If the governement would dole out dollars according to the need in society, then this system would work for everyone.
Essentially this would turn the grant system into the Gates Foundation... where those recieving money must agree to share their findings.
This is why I run winpooch http://winpooch.free.fr/. It's not a firewall, but it does allow me to monitor my outgoing connections, and apply rules to them. For example, I can have it prompt me for every outbound, just announce when an outbound connection is established, or allow all outbound. Same thing with inbound. More complex rule sets are allowed as well.
It's not gonna save me from a worm itself, but it will tell me when I have a worm or rootkit making outbound connections.
And it allows me to use ClamWin to do on access scanning, tells me whenever an application tries to change the registry or system files, and provides a simple method to determine most of the potentially damaging processes running on my machine.
FTA: "the company's Developer Tools Group, WHICH IS UP FOR SALE, is scheduled to announce single-language versions of the components of Borland Developer Studio..."
The "up for sale" bit tells me that what they are doing is trying to drive some good press, boost their stock price a bit, and negotiate a higher selling price.
Like most has-been corporations, they refuse to accept that they are obsolete and out of the running, so they would rather simply inflate their stock prices artifically so they can walk away with a nice chunk of change ans say, "see we didn't fail!" All I can say is, at least they didn't inflate theirs like SCO did!
Who better to test something then those who will use it. Now of course there are betas and automatic reporting that also help... but there is nothing like the developers asking their users for feedback in a very humble way like this.
It's their way of saying, our software is probably full of holes but with your help we can make it better.
MS tried that with XP and their error reporting feature. From what I understand, their success was amazing with that tool... however I never felt someone say that they felt appreciated for submiting their error reports.
Gotta love companies who realize that it's the users not the software that make their product great. Give users what they want, make them feel like they are appreciated, and most of all respect them; keys to any truely great software (or any other product for that matter). Now if only we could get the RIAA and the rest of the media companies bent on making fair use mean fairly usable to understand what customers want.
I still remember the first time I ever connected to the internet... dialed into michnet at a blazing 2400bps and what did I do... hmm I'm pretty sure I checked out gopher, then tried fingering a few ladies, decided I had more fun on my favorite BBS (Dearborn Connection) and dicided that the internet was about worthless. Well, it wasn't long before I realized how wrong I was!
Cheaper games my ass... cheaper for the developer maybe... when was the last time your saw retail sofware prices drop due to outsourcing?
What I don't understand is why companies like the idea of paying people who don't speak our language or understand our culture to develop software for us. Sure they save money, but at what expense... loss of customers, delays, and shoddy work. My next software project will be entirely developed in the US where I can build a culture around my product... take my developers out to lunch or buy the keg for the company party. These things are what make great software... happy programmers! Sure a monkey could do some of the work, but I don't have the patience or time to wait for a monkey to get it right. I'd rather overpay and enjoy the process of creating a product than save a few bucks and drive myself to an early grave due to the stress it causes me!
Slashdot Mirror
"Allow an X rating and it's on!"
/. readers see only "government control" when issues of regulation and such arise. They fail to realize that some of these laws serve our interests better than not having them at all.
AMEN BROTHER!
Too many of us
Now if the purpose of this bill was to eliminate all sexually explicit material, gore, and GTA like violence from gaming I would take issue. However to be able to create and market ANY game that a developer wanted to create, so long as it was properly rated, would be a great boon to the industry.
Just look at the porn industry. Without the X and XXX ratings, I would bet that you would need to look underground to find material that fits in either category. But because of a clear rating system for movies, the market allows these movies to be produced... and even broadcast.
GTA was released and it has come under significant legal assault due to it's content. Had a mandatory, legal, and accepted rating system been in place, and the game was properly labeled and had the proper sales restrictions in place, then there would be no grounds for a suit.
I am actually surprised that the game studios don't lobby for a similar bill (this one is a little unrealistic), it would allow them absolute freedom in their design and would result in the retailer and parents taking the blame when children were exposed to "unsavory" content. Not to mention, the more severe the rating, the more "desirable" the product is for kids... slap an XXX rating on a game, and kids will come out of the woodwork to get their sticky little hands on it.
Ratings work... they work for the studio, and for the consumer. This has been proven with TV, movies, and virtually any other media that is rated for proper consumption. Let us ensure that the government avoids dictating what content CAN NOT be put in a game, and instead let the consumer make an educated decision about what they buy, while letting studios continue to push the envelope with unsavory content.
On a side note... it would also be kinda nice to have a system where the OS or console was aware of the rating and parents would be able to restrict the system (or user account) to games under a certain rating. This would result in games with multiple levels of content... if the user were restricted to PG, then all of the sex and gore would be reduced to PG levels... while most of us would run the game unrestricted and see all of the pixelated nudity our nether regions desire. Concerned parents would be happy, and the rest of us would as well.
It's pretty safe to say that the majority of virtual machines in the world are run on windows boxes... so what they are saying is that "a windows user can't run a cheap version of windows in a virtual machine... oh yeah and the few Mac users gotta pony up too"
The part I don't get is why. Most of the windows virtual machines in use today are used for development purposes... as a developer, I need to be able to test that my software works on all versions of windows... why the hell can't I run them all in a virtual machine?
This is just plain stupid.
We care because instead of taking a once useful and arguably well made software product and tossing it in the trash... they are instead opening it up for those who are interested.
We care because they are helping to set a precedent, one that I hope becomes the norm for tech and software companies, at end of life... open source!
We care because one of the benefits of open source, is that a particularly well written piece of code can be adapted for a different function while retaining most of what makes it 'good'. So NAC's are worthless to you... but what about that one really powerful function Cisco wrote that finds it's way into 3 other open source products that are NOT worthless to you.
Finally, were NAC's so bad that you would rather they just tossed the code in their recycle bin?
Thank GOD openID is not really about identifying an individual! It's about creating a single identity... not necessarily my own.
When I go on the internet, I can be a different person. I may be a sad little 14 year old in real life, but on slashdot I'm a 35 year old IT professional. The last thing I want is to have my online ID tied to my real life identity.
If that were the case, then there is the potential that the signatures you had could be used to identify you outside of your cozy internet environment. Think ads that say... we can beat the rates your paying to SUCHANDSUCH mortgage company, or JIM BOBS hardware now open in YOUR HOME TOWN... a lot of information could be extracted based upon who you have had sign your identity.
I agree that a web of trust is a good thing... in fact it would make an excellent addition to the OpenID framework in the future. I could set up an OpenID server with multiple online ID's, I could tie my signed public key to some of those id's.
Even better would be the ability to have our openID server configured so that it would supply credentials only to sites that WE trust. For example, I supply a key for my bank to use for my account... then when I log in using my OpenID, they encrypt a random string using the key I supplied them. My openID server could be configured to A. check that the request is coming from a trusted domain, B. verify that the request was encryped with the correct key, and C. verify that I provided the correct passphrase to decrypt the string. Essentially it would prevent phishing (the false host doesn't have the key so they can't authenticate even if they spoofed the domain), and it would allow the bank to verify that my openID url wasn't hijacked by someone pretending to be me (unless they stole the private key off my server).
That would be secure... and if my bank required that I hand deliver the key on USB or CD media so they could verify that the key did indeed come from the account holder, it would be even more secure! They could even use such a system as an alternative to asking for personal information when calling them... I supply my OpenID name and a verification code, they encrypt the code with the trusted public key I provided and verify it with my OpenID server, which would decrypt it and reply back with the decrypted content.
There really is a lot of possibility there!
"Hydraulic squeezers can't achieve 1/30 compression. Or, imagine if they could compact that 1/30th instead of 1/1?"
Try, hydraulic squeezers can't achieve 1/1 compression of volume.
They claim that the volume of the ash is 1/30 of the input trash. When you compact something, you do not decrease the volume of material, you just remove the air spaces between and within the material... unless you compress it so much that you change the composition of the material or at very least it's temperature. If I have 1 ton of trash and place it in a swimming pool and measure the water it displaces, assuming there are no air pockets that the water cannot reach, it will displace the same amount of water as that same trash tightly compressed... thus the volume of trash is the same.
A 1 cubic meter box has a certain volume of paper matter... sure compressed the box takes up far less than one cu meter of space, but the amount of paper matter has not been reduced at all. But if you burn that paper, a considerable amount of the paper will be released as one type of gas or another, greatly reducing the volume of the paper matter.
I am quite certain that the 1/30th volume figure is talking about 1/30 of the compressed volume of trash... otherwise I could achieve that figure by squashing a couple of boxes and cans. Or better yet, by starting with a pile of balloons as my input.
I'll take this two steps further.
1. Place the CPU on the opposite side of the MOBO, with a little thermal paste and a couple of precision standoffs you could effectively couple it thermally with the MOBO backplane... which would of course be one big heatsink cooled by a blower forcing air behind the motherboard, between the backplane and the side of the case.
2. make most of the upgrades externally accessible. This is a bit more of a total redesign, but seriously, who really needs room for full length cards anymore... and can't we just do away with PCI altogether now. Lets replace it with an upgrade cartridge design thats about 4x4x1 and snaps into an external slot on the outside of the case, almost like a removable HDD caddy but smaller.
Used vegetable oil has to be the stupidest replacement fuel ever thought up. Sure it's cheap now, it's a waste product... but not for long the way these soon to be short lived startups are going.
a s_fuel#Waste_Vegetable_Oil) of the current petroleum demands... sure it's better than draining an non-renewable resource... but it's no replacement.
The only ones who will profit from a Veg Oil economy will be McDonald's and the like... their oil will be just as valuable before and after use, thus they spend nothing on oil at all, instead of throwing it away at the end of the day they sell it for their cost.
Eventually demand will surpass capacity to produce... and this is probably 1% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil_used_
I surely wouldn't want to stake my future wealth on it by starting a business around it... the economics just don't work... if you are successful it won't take long to put yourself out of business. When the veggie oil starts matching unleaded, you will have capped.
Nothing to see here... just another story about the RIAA shooting itself in the foot. I just hope that someday the general public gives a shit about who they get their entertainment from, and gets something done about this BS that the RIAA keeps pulling without any oversight from the government or condemnation from the public (except for those of us who are in the 'know').
Are you hiring?
Seriously, it's amazing how many IT managers don't get this... sure I don't have 10 years experience with Peoplesoft... but I bet within a year I'll be ahead of 50% of of the current support staff just due to the diversity of my knowledge and my understanding of the way things work at a low level (thank you Linus!).
So it continues, they hire a guy who will keep doing things today the way they were done yesterday instead of hiring someone who can bring some perspective with them.
The old school adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is dead. To keep up in today's tech society, you need to plan to replace almost everything every 10 years or so... even your employees. This constant change brings new perspectives and new solutions, allowing you to keep up or ahead with the competition. Analog telephone technology ain't broken, but I think we can all agree that it needs fixing. The way people seem to be moving more and more to VOIP and wireless for voice and away from their telcos for data, I bet the most telcos out there wish they hadn't kept trying to leverage the old tech and started fixing what wasn't broken a long time ago.
The only reason that I can see to not put one on the core is that it would break x86 spec. Though it looks like AMD is considering doing this anyway with their new GPU/CPU combo mentioned today.
As far as FPGA (a type of PLD that is "field programmable" meaning it can be reprogrammed while installed rather than by using a separate programmer) technology being oldschool, I would say it is not.
I believe that they are primarily used in hardware design however, and very few have been used in consumer products as it is cheaper to mass produce a dedicated chip. That and I could argue that hardware manufacturers would rather sell you the next version of the hardware than let you simply download an update for your FPGA.
Considering that an FPGA can be programmed to do specialized tasks at speeds that can be as much as 100X faster than a general purpose CPU, I think it is inevitable that they will eventually become mainstream in some form or another... the HT bus is ideal for such an implementation.
Thanks for the link... mmm I wanna get my grubby hands on one of those!
I have made a similar argument, I want a FPGA on the HT bus. A Fully Programmable Gate Array would allow software developers to create hardware "programs" to accelerate their products. For example, Photoshop and Premiere could re-program the FPGA to accelerate processor intensive tasks. Codecs could be implemented on the chip for realtime encoding (for example http://www3.elphel.com/en/products is a camera that does OGG Theora in a FFPGA in realtime at 640x480x90fps). And game writers could optimize any part of their applications they wish. Sure FPGA's are not as fast as a non-programmable processor, but they are infinately more flexable, and if it's sitting on the HT bus with direct access to system RAM, you would see some amazing uses. Accelerated encryption/decryption, email filtering and virus detection, or any other process that is sequential in nature and done repeatedly.
I have come to the conclusion, that unless a tape backup solution is necessary it is often easier to backup to a remote machine. Sure, archive to tape once in a while, but for the primary requirement of a backup... rsync your data to a seperate machine with a large and cheap raid array.
I use a wonderful little tool/script called rsnapshot to backup our servers to a remote location. It's fast as it uses rsync and only transmits the portions of files that have changed. It's effortless to restore as the entire directory tree appears in each backup folder using symlinks, and it's rock solid.
Essentially the best part of this solution is it's low maintenance and the fact that restorations require absolutely no manual work. I even have an intermediate backup server that holds a snapshot of our users home directories... my users can connect to the server via a network share and restore any file that has existed in their home directory in the last week by simply copying and pasting it... changed files are backed up every hour.
Sure, the data is not as compressed as it could be in some backup solutions, and it's residing on a running server so it's subject to corruption or hack attempts. But my users absolutely love it. And it really doesn't waste much space unless a large percentage of your data changes frequently, which would consume a lot of tape space as well.
Before I am flamed... its not TFA that compares it to RFID so much as the original poster... sorry.
The advantage of RFID is that it could be read from a distance... so that you could walk out of a store with a cart full of items and not need to scan each one individually. This removes this ability.
The security concern with RFID is that it could be read from a distance... so a marketing company could scan a cart full of items and not need to scan each one individually. this removes this ability.
OK so now it doesn't benifit you or the store at all... but it protects your security better! But the way I see it is it's no better than the current, cheap alternative of barcodes.
I think where TFA is off is in it's comparing this technology and it's applications to RFID. These technologies are certainly not targetting the same markets or applications. I wouldn't mind the new chip in my credit card (unlike RFID), but don't raise the price of my canned fruit by embedding one in the label.
This new technology is best suited in situations where large volumes of data need to be attached to an object and securely (relative, physical only) read very quickly and with minimal effort. Medical applications come to mind as well as banking, credit card processing, and identification (DL, VISA, Passport).
I have what I believe to be an excellent open source opportunity that I would love to develop around an existing open source product. There are a number of potential concerns however, namely:
/.'s audience is bright enough to have thought up an idea like mine.
1. The parent software has some issues that may make my company a target for patient and other legal attacks. For example, it uses Mpeg4, and plays DVD's under Linux.
2. The product would be heavily dependant upon COTS (commercial off the shelf) hardware from a manufacturer that does not provide detailed specifications, and thus could easily force us into a licensing agreement by simply changing the hardware and making all current open source drivers obsolete.
3. The product would be competing in a several hundred million dollar industry where it is not likely to be well liked by it's powerful and wealthy competitors, and thus would be a target for any shenanigans they might dream up.
4. Finally, I have essentially no development experience, nor do I have any skilled developers at my disposal. Instead I would need to attempt to bribe (for lack of a better word) the parent software's developers to make changes to their software as well as recruit my own developers to handle the proprietary end of the product that will be used to make the OSS marketable for the application in mind.
I can imagine that issues such as these have great influence in your decisions. There could be nothing worse that funding the next best thing since sliced bread only to have the project destroyed by legal, political, or underhanded business practices. How big a part do these factors play in your decision making process?
Do you believe that open source startups should be headed by a business minded developer, or is it more important for that leader to have a clear vision and a larger view of the project? In other words, would I, with no way to demonstrate what I hope to accomplish, even be taken seriously with just an idea, a business plan, and a lot of motivation? Even if that idea had enormous potential to become a leader in a multi-hundred-million dollar industry?
I appreciate your willingness to participate in this Q&A, I am sure this discussion will be very popular as I know that most of
By the way, I conceived an internet connected, MP3 downloading/playing Jukebox... called a lawyer who specialized in Jukebox copyright law, had a great discussion with him regarding how Jukebox law might apply to downloaded music, and I never heard back from him again. A year or so later they started hitting bars and pool halls in my area. A little research found that this lawyer had his name on a patent or two related to the product. I have since learned to be a cryptic as possible about my ideas, sorry about that!
... would be a FPGA that sits on a core. For those who are not familiar, a Field Programmable Gate Array is essentially a peice of hardware that can be "programmed" to perform specialized tasks, especially sequental ones, at faster speeds than software on a general purpose CPU. Imagine a fully programmable coprocessor with blazing access to RAM and a hypertransport to the general purpose cores for more complex functions that are hard to script in hardware.
I have seen comparatively weak, 1M gate FPGA's encode OGG Theora at 1280x1024 at almost 30fps (http://www3.elphel.com/en/products), imagine what a FPGA with a far greater number of gates, communicating at processor speeds could do.
Sure it would need to be reprogrammed for every task it needed to perform, however if I'm doing video encoding or decoding, I wouldn't mind reprogramming it. Game designers could even use the FPGA to accelerate tasks from AI to raytracing to whatever.
It may not be as fast as a coprocessor built for a single task, but it would be a heck of a lot more versitile. And it could be reprogrammed if any bugs are discovered.
As the GP said... he needs to brush up on his economics. The parent is exactly right, the only things that typical companies that show profits can do with their money are:
1. give dividends to investors (boosts stock appeal and encorages stable pricing which...)
2. improve the companies credit rating so that the company can...
3. borrow money at extremely low rates so that they can...
4. lend the money at higher rates and...
5. make more money so that they can...
6. GOTO 1
The benifit of this system is that it keeps the money circulating in the economy. If MS did not borrow and lend, their billions would be out of circulation and our economy would suffer far more than most people realize.
Essentially what huge companies with great credit ratings do is provide extremely low risk investments for lenders and thier customers. So if I buy a low risk (low yeild) CD or bond, the bank I bought it from would then lend that money to someone like MS for a slightly higher rate than they are paying me. Without large, stable, profitable companies like MS taking loans, the returns of my low risk investments must drop as the bank cannot afford lend my money out at those low rates due to increased risk in the loans they issue. Therefore I lose.
If I could stand being any nerdier than I already am, I think I would have gone into econ. Econ is like an infinately variable application... make one minor change then predict how the ripples will effect something completely unrelated.
For example, there are many economists that belive that outsourcing our jobs is actually going to improve our economy and employability once the system has run its course? Sure it's counter intuitive... but with a clear mind and some creative thinking you can see how this might occur.
I could be wrong, but I think they mean that make between 4% and 6% per stock. Therefore if they do this 100 times per year they make a pretty hefty chunk after compounding.
For example a $1000 start would pay out $131,501.26 like this over 100 iterations if they keep reinvesting the funds on their next spam crusade (using 5% return per iteration).
So this is not 4%-6% per year... it's 4%-6% per stock... considering they are only invested for a day or two it's entirely possible that they actually bring home closer to 10000% per year. Not bad for little to no work!
... but how about making all government funded research created technology free to the government. For example, if my tax dollars helped develop and market drug X, why the hell should my tax dollars have to pay market price when someone on medicaid is perscribed drug X.
I think that all government funded research should be internationally patented by the US Governement and all rights to manufacture based on these patents should be free to any US owned and based corporation. This would give the US an edge in the global technology sector.
Some would argue that this would hurt competition. I agree, but not entirely. Sure Company X who developed technology X on a governement grant would never be able to own the patent on the technology... however they still paid their workers and maintained another year of success in the market. Next year, they can pursue private investments with thier new reputation and create a for-profit product based upon patented improvements to their previously disclosed discoveries.
This system would help prevent government funds from going into wasteful duplication of efforts in areas such as cancer/AIDS research who's goals should be the improvement of society rather than massive profits anyways. If the governement would dole out dollars according to the need in society, then this system would work for everyone.
Essentially this would turn the grant system into the Gates Foundation... where those recieving money must agree to share their findings.
This is why I run winpooch http://winpooch.free.fr/. It's not a firewall, but it does allow me to monitor my outgoing connections, and apply rules to them. For example, I can have it prompt me for every outbound, just announce when an outbound connection is established, or allow all outbound. Same thing with inbound. More complex rule sets are allowed as well.
It's not gonna save me from a worm itself, but it will tell me when I have a worm or rootkit making outbound connections.
And it allows me to use ClamWin to do on access scanning, tells me whenever an application tries to change the registry or system files, and provides a simple method to determine most of the potentially damaging processes running on my machine.
Best of all it's opensource.
FTA:
"the company's Developer Tools Group, WHICH IS UP FOR SALE, is scheduled to announce single-language versions of the components of Borland Developer Studio..."
The "up for sale" bit tells me that what they are doing is trying to drive some good press, boost their stock price a bit, and negotiate a higher selling price.
Like most has-been corporations, they refuse to accept that they are obsolete and out of the running, so they would rather simply inflate their stock prices artifically so they can walk away with a nice chunk of change ans say, "see we didn't fail!" All I can say is, at least they didn't inflate theirs like SCO did!
Who better to test something then those who will use it. Now of course there are betas and automatic reporting that also help... but there is nothing like the developers asking their users for feedback in a very humble way like this.
It's their way of saying, our software is probably full of holes but with your help we can make it better.
MS tried that with XP and their error reporting feature. From what I understand, their success was amazing with that tool... however I never felt someone say that they felt appreciated for submiting their error reports.
Gotta love companies who realize that it's the users not the software that make their product great. Give users what they want, make them feel like they are appreciated, and most of all respect them; keys to any truely great software (or any other product for that matter). Now if only we could get the RIAA and the rest of the media companies bent on making fair use mean fairly usable to understand what customers want.
I still remember the first time I ever connected to the internet... dialed into michnet at a blazing 2400bps and what did I do... hmm I'm pretty sure I checked out gopher, then tried fingering a few ladies, decided I had more fun on my favorite BBS (Dearborn Connection) and dicided that the internet was about worthless. Well, it wasn't long before I realized how wrong I was!
Cheaper games my ass... cheaper for the developer maybe... when was the last time your saw retail sofware prices drop due to outsourcing?
What I don't understand is why companies like the idea of paying people who don't speak our language or understand our culture to develop software for us. Sure they save money, but at what expense... loss of customers, delays, and shoddy work. My next software project will be entirely developed in the US where I can build a culture around my product... take my developers out to lunch or buy the keg for the company party. These things are what make great software... happy programmers! Sure a monkey could do some of the work, but I don't have the patience or time to wait for a monkey to get it right. I'd rather overpay and enjoy the process of creating a product than save a few bucks and drive myself to an early grave due to the stress it causes me!